Thursday, September 19, 2013

The team at the museum

We went to the Utah Natural History Museum for a special Meet the Experts with other FLL teams.

There wasn't an expert on avalanches but there was an expert on landslides which was the closest topic to ours. And then we went to the earthquake expert becuse earthquakes make infrasound.
And then we went to the robot table and looked at the design of the robots that other teams had brought.
- Posted by Eden

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Refining Robots

Demonstrating the core value "We Have Fun!"

This week we spent time refining the robots we built last week to fix some flaws.  One robot, giraffe bot, was very tall and the other, pig bot, was wide and so low that the motors dragged on the table.  We also started working on claw based attachments for grabbing pets, people, and supplies on the table.  Below, you can see Damek working on the supply truck mission.  It's wheels will drive straight easily, but it's not aimed at the scoring zone.  Pushing LEGO wheels sideways is hard, so he's working on a forklift type attachment to lift the back wheels so the front wheels can more easily turn.


We continued practicing our presentation skills.  Below, Eden demonstrates some telemark skiing techniques. 

Next week, we're preparing "elevator pitches" of our project, a 30 second or so explanation off what we're working on.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Presentations & Robot Building

For our meeting on Wednesday, each team member gave a short, 2-3 minute, presentation on a subject of their choosing to help them with their presentation skills.  

Damek gave a presentation on How The Brain Works.

Emmett gave a presentation on Getting Over My Fear Of Heights.

Kenny gave a presentation on the ISS (International Space Station).

Eden gave a presentation on Telemark Skiing.

Luke gave a presentation on a Minecraft World.

Coach Stephanie took videos of the presentations so we could all watch and offer feedback on what was great about the presentations as well as offered feedback on what could be improved.  We talked about what makes a good presentation and the boys will do their presentations again next week using the feedback as a guide.

Also at the meeting the boys built 2 robots.  Eden & Kenny worked together and finished building a robot that they had started the previous week,


and Damek, Emmett & Luke worked together and built a second robot.



The boys will test these out and see if they need to do any modifications to them.

For our Core Values part of the meeting, Coach Deanna led a team building activity.  

There was a 3x3 box with a grid and working as a team we had to find a way to fill 6 of the squares in without having 3 in a straight line touching each other.  The result was that we found 2 ways to fit them in without 3 touching each in a straight line. - Damek















The boys & Coach Stephanie also went over some of the missions on the table to brainstorm how they might do some of the missions, what missions they really want to do and what missions they might scratch.